One of The Original Series' most notorious villains almost returned in Star Trek: Enterprise, nearly delivering the franchise-defining story fans still wanted in a fifth season. Instead of another anonymous 22nd-century threat, this abandoned pitch would have returned to “The Savage Curtain” and brought a genocidal war criminal from Trek's universe history books into Captain Archer's era, forcing the crew to face humanity's darkest past.
Writer-producer Garfield Reeves-Stevens said in an interview with TrekMovie.com that the story was meant to be a personal, character-driven two-parter, not a continuity gimmick. Reeves-Stevens said, "One we pitched it to Manny [Coto], and he said, break it down. We put it on cards. We wrote a treatment, and it all had to do with Colonel Green coming back. And then the decision was 'too close to the Augments. We don’t want to do another one.'"
Reeves-Stevens continued by saying:
"But the intriguing thing in that was Colonel Green having survived in some way, is going after the people who had hurt him in the past, and also reached out to the people, the descendants of those who’d helped them. And that Reed is [...] we were going to find out his father or his grandfather was one of the supporters of Colonel Green. So we get into a personal story, and that one was going to be a two-parter, which ended with Trip and Reed on the outside of the Enterprise as it was about to go to warp.”
In TOS’ “The Savage Curtain,” Colonel Green is introduced as a genocidal 21st‑century war criminal, a symbol of humanity’s darkest impulses that Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock are forced to confront on the planet Excalbia.
Revisiting Green on Enterprise would have tied the 22nd century more directly to Trek’s post–World War III backstory, while the “too close to the Augments” concern shows the producers were wary of repeating another genetically‑linked tyrant storyline so soon after season 4’s Augment arc.
The planned twist that Malcolm Reed had a father or grandfather who supported Green would have reframed the buttoned‑up tactical officer as someone literally carrying the weight of humanity’s past atrocities in his own family history.
This unused pitch is exactly the kind of morally messy story Enterprise needed more of, because it pushes Starfleet’s “we’re better now” optimism up against the lingering stain of human authoritarianism.
Making Reed confront the idea that his family once backed a man like Green could have deepened him beyond the “by‑the‑book armory officer” into someone wrestling with inherited guilt and complicity, a theme modern Trek loves but Enterprise rarely got to fully explore.
And ending a two‑parter with Trip and Reed clinging to the hull as the Enterprise NX‑01 jumps to warp sounds like peak season‑5 energy, a cinematic, high‑stakes image that might have helped the show carve out an identity distinct from both TOS nostalgia and TNG‑era polish.
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